Posts published by Jean Edward Smith

For more than a generation, Americans have been told that government is the problem, not the solution. The mantra can be traced back to Barry Goldwater’s presidential bid in 1964. It provided the mind-set for the Reagan administration, and it has come to ultimate fruition during the presidency of George W. Bush.Read more…

Presidential candidates now jockeying for position might take comfort when they recall Franklin D. Roosevelt’s perilous route to the Democratic nomination. Even F.D.R., one of America’s most successful presidents, had to work long and hard to get his party’s support for the job. And the last night of that effort was the longest and hardest of all.

In 1932, the leadership of the Democratic National Committee was firmly in the hands of Al Smith loyalists. Convention rules required a two-thirds majority for nomination, and the party’s last three presidential candidates – James Cox of Ohio, the Wall Street lawyer John W. Davis and Al Smith – in addition to House Speaker John Garner and Senate minority leader Joe Robinson, were on record supporting the stand-aside economic policies of the Hoover administration and the ill-conceived and exorbitant Smoot-Hawley tariffs on imported goods.Read more…

Nothing can divide a nation more than war does — as we can see for ourselves today. But the most effective way to keep that division from widening and leaving permanent scars is for a president to reach out to the opposition party and bring it aboard. Various presidents have successfully done this.

During the Civil War, President Lincoln turned the War Department over to Edwin Stanton, a Democrat. When he ran for re-election in 1864, Lincoln chose as his running mate Andrew Johnson, also a Democrat – the only Southern senator who did not follow his state into rebellion. Lincoln still was criticized aplenty for his conduct of the war, but the criticism often came from radical members of his own party.

Franklin Roosevelt, who had witnessed Woodrow Wilson’s partisan defeat over the League of Nations, was even more careful to avoid dissent along party lines. When war clouds gathered in 1940, he reached out to the Republican party to name Henry L. Stimson secretary of war and Frank Knox secretary of the Navy – the two most important preparedness positions in the cabinet. Stimson had been Herbert Hoover’s secretary of state; Knox had been the G.O.P. vice presidential candidate in 1936. Both were prominent public figures. Neither was considered friendly to the New Deal.

Stimson staffed the civilian ranks of the War Department with card-carrying Republicans. Undersecretary Robert Patterson had been appointed to the United States Court of Appeals by Herbert Hoover; Assistant Secretary John J. McCloy had organized the Supreme Court case against the New Deal in United States v. Schechter Poultry Co. – the pivotal case that overturned the National Industrial Recovery Act, a centerpiece of Roosevelt’s recovery plan. Robert Lovett, assistant secretary for air affairs, was a senior partner in a prominent Republican investment firm. None of these men had ever voted for Roosevelt, yet they proved remarkably effective team players.Read more…